Contrary to what many would seem to believe, there is typically one thing you must do if you are going to lose weight successfully:
Eat
That's right. If you try to go for too long without food, you will actually cause your body to do the very thing you don't want it to do - store what you do eat as fat. Ever striving for self-preservation, if your body detects a long period without any food, it goes into “starvation” mode and resists burning fat because it doesn't know when the next meal is coming. Your metabolism will slow down as a defense mechanism (the opposite of what you want) and when you do finally eat something, your body will tend to want to store the nutrients rather than use them.
A simple way to combat this is to eat frequently, but eat less each time. If you strive to eat 5 times a day AND eat so that you are hungry at each interval, you will keep your body from going into “starvation” mode and you will teach it that food is coming very shortly. Your body will “feel free” to burn the calories it is taking in and not be as apt to store them as fat. In addition, your metabolism will begin to race rather than crawl and you will begin burning fat rapidly.
A Simple Plan to Follow is the Following:
- Breakfast: 400 calories
- Mid-morning: 100 calorie snack
- Lunch: 400 calories
- Mid-afternoon: 100 calorie snack
- Dinner: 400 calories
Notice that at each meal, you will not be eating your typical 800-1000 calories at one sitting. Instead, you will be eating only 400 calories or so. Your body should be able to tear through this pretty quickly and be hungry by your next snack/meal. By doing this, you are telling your body it does not have to worry about storing food because the next meal/snack is just around the corner.
Now, there's one thing you are going to notice once you begin eating like this: you probably cannot eat what you typically were accustomed to eating. You could - but you are going to have to eat so little of your typical high calorie foods that it won't feel like you are eating anything at all (How does one bite of a candy bar sound for lunch? Not much fun to me...). Remember, the plan is two tiered: 1) eat frequently AND 2) make sure you are hungry by your next meal or snack.
If you eat frequently but neglect eating so that you are hungry at the next meal/snack (in other words - eating a pizza five times a day!), you are going to gain weight. If you try to eat too little so that you are hungry all of the time, your body will go into “starvation” mode, your metabolism will slow down, and guess what? You will gain weight. I can't emphasize enough that you must pay attention to both aspects of the equation.
You will find that if you eat as much healthy food as you can (whole grains, fruit, vegetables, nuts, etc.) - that 400 calories is going to mean a lot more food, but it will be food that your body can deal with by the next time you eat.
Listen to your own body and discover for yourself what you can eat and cannot eat and still be hungry by the next meal or snack. But, be honest with yourself! Remember, your body is smarter than you think. It will let you know what to do if you will just listen to it.
And always remember…in order to lose weight, you have to do the one thing we all want to do when trying to lose weight...
Eat!
